Taoiseach Enda Kenny hails deal as Ireland labelled a Greek 'enemy'

Enda Kenny leaves at the end of an EU summit on the Greek debt crisis at the EU Council in Brussels on July 13, 2015

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny has said the Greek deal securing a potential third bailout would allow the country to prosper.

The Fine Gael leader, who attended the all-night meeting in Brussels, said a third bailout has the potential to allow Greece to “thrive and prosper and continue to remain a member of the Eurozone”.

“May I say that I am glad a deal has been reached here,” he said. “This has been a pretty bruising experience over the last period.”

He described the summit meeting as “realistic, frank and very pragmatic”.

Mr Kenny said it was a “challenging” position for Greece, but one that Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras had said “he is up for”.

Separately, in an interview with the New Statesman, Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said the governments that might have been expected to be most sympathetic towards Greece – including Ireland – were actually their “most energetic enemies”.

Mr Varoufakis, who resigned last week, said the “greatest nightmare” of those countries with large debts, such as Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland, “was our success”.

“Were we to succeed in negotiating a better deal, that would obliterate them politically: they would have to answer to their own people why they didn’t negotiate like we were doing,” he said.